Maury Chaykin obituary

Chaykin in a scene from the HBO series Entourage. Photograph: Claudette Barius/AP

The actor Maury Chaykin, who has died aged 61 after a heart-valve infection, was an American and a Canadian citizen, and his career reflected his dual nationality. In the US, he was a familiar face, if not a recognisable name, playing small but telling roles in major films. His breakthrough came in Dances With Wolves (1990), playing Major Fambrough, who sends Kevin Costner on his frontier assignment and then kills himself. Chaykin's only leading role was in the cable TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery (2001), as the titular detective who refuses to leave his house, delegating that to his assistant (Timothy Hutton).

In Canada, Chaykin was something of a national treasure. He won a Genie award for best actor for his performance as a Brian Wilson-like burned-out rock star in Whale Music (1994), gave remarkable performances in three films directed by Atom Egoyan – The Adjuster (1991), The Sweet Hereafter (1997) and Where the Truth Lies (2005) – and won two Gemini awards, for appearances in the Canadian TV dramas La Femme Nikita (1997) and At the Hotel (2006). He had recently starred in HBO Canada's hit comedy series Less Than Kind.

Chaykin's appearance, with his fleshy, expressive face and soft body, allowed him to suggest pathos, but he was able to play it with a fierce, often ironic, comic intelligence. This made him a natural for shadowy roles, where a cloak of affability hides dangerous aggression.

He was born in Brooklyn, New York, where his American father taught accounting at Baruch College, and his Canadian mother was a nurse. He moved to Toronto in 1974, after studying theatre at the State University of New York in Buffalo, and trying unsuccessfully to make it on Broadway. He worked in theatre in Toronto, had a part in the 1975 film Me, and in 1978 appeared in an episode of the TV comedy King of Kensington. He starred in Riel (1979), a TV movie about Louis Riel, the leader of the indigenous Métis people, among a cast of Canadian actors including Christopher Plummer, William Shatner, Arthur Hill and Leslie Nielsen.

In the 1980s he kept busy with small roles in films including War Games (1983). He appeared opposite Powers Boothe's Philip Marlowe in an adaptation of Raymond Chandler's short story Red Wind for the US series Philip Marlowe, Private Eye. He also appeared in the cop show Night Heat (1986).

After Dances With Wolves, Chaykin had notable parts in My Cousin Vinny (1992) and smaller films such as Ed Zwick's Leaving Normal (1992) and Diane Keaton's Unstrung Heroes (1995). He had bigger roles in two films by the British director Richard Kwietniowski, as a diner owner in Love and Death On Long Island (1997), and, in one of his best parts, as Philip Seymour Hoffman's bookie in Owning Mahowny (2003). In 2006, Chaykin won the "Career so far" award from the Chlotrudis Society for Independent Film.

In 2000, he played Nero Wolfe in The Golden Spiders, a TV movie that led to the series; he later sent up the character as Nerus in the science-fiction series Stargate SG-1. He also had a recurring role in the HBO series Entourage as the overbearing film producer Harvey Weingard, which led him to quip, "I have never worked for Harvey Weinstein [on whom the character was based] and now I think maybe I never will." His final credits include Sidney Furie's Conduct Unbecoming and George Hickenlooper's Casino Jack, in which he plays a mentor to the lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Chaykin's first two marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by his third wife, the actor Susannah Hoffmann; their daughter, Rose; his brother, Dan, and sister, Debra; and his mother, Clarice.